Enter a search term for instant results

Enter a search term for instant results

Virtual Reality Project Shines A New Light On Penn State History

As virtual reality climbs closer and closer to the mainstream, Penn State decided to embark on a little VR project of its own, trying to give students, alumni, and anyone else interested a glimpse into the school’s past.

The aptly named Historic Campus Modeling Projectutilizes different technologies, including virtual reality and 3-D modeling to recreate what University Park looked like at different stages in history. The project started as an effort to create 2-D models of the campus’ past, but transformed into its current state after the project team started toying with new technology.

“While the Department of Geography was creating two-dimensional campus maps, our group started wondering ‘What if we create the campus map in 3-D?’” project lead Alexander Klippel said. “Then we realized we could take that one step further through virtual reality.”

Klippel, an associate professor of geography and the Gosnell Senior Faculty Scholar and Fellow at the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing, said the team’s main source for the information to back this project comes from the university libraries, which have digitized versions of building maps and images of the buildings. These, along with other resources, allow the team to get as accurate a representation as possible of buildings that have seen their fair share of changes and even buildings which no longer exist.

“It’s just amazing how drastically campus has changed over the last 100 years,” Klippel said. “With this virtual reality technology, people can go back in time and experience campus as it once was.”

The team hopes VR maps will both give users a glimpse into the past and help them understand how it can impact the future for for Penn State.

“There’s a historical perspective that to understand the present you have to first understand the past, but it can be really hard to imagine it,” said Mark Simpson, a geography doctoral candidate working on the project. “So being able to see what was here before in virtual reality is really helpful.”

Please subscribe to read ad free. (Ad blocking detected.)

23

6

0

0

0

29total shares

About the Author

is a senior Supply Chain Management major with an Economics minor (Read: Business Douche) from South Jersey. He has an intense fear of graduating so please don't bring it up. He writes about stupid things nobody cares about, and student life if the site is low on content that is clearly supposed be funny but is really very unfunny. He is lovingly (?) known around the staff as Baby Mike which may or may not be because he has a child (hint: it’s not). He’s also a second generation Penn Stater who has been wearing Penn State sweatshirts since before he was two, a habit he hasn’t grown out of. If you really hate yourself, you can follow him on twitter at @mike_reisman or email him at [email protected]

Former Penn State women’s gymnastics head coach Jeff Thompson has filed a lawsuit against the university following the termination of his contract in February 2017. Thompson, alongside his wife and associate head coach Rachelle Thompson, was accused by former gymnasts and an assistant coach of creating a hostile team environment. The Thompsons allegedly pressured athletes to compete […]

The lab uses a combination of human genomics, computational biology, and functional studies, using Drosophila and human cell lines, to understand the risks caused by genetic mutations and to grasp how gene disruption leads to altered neurodevelopment.